Fruit Pizza on the Grill (baked with the stone)

As many of you now know my house is not air conditioned and it is creeping up into the 80s and 90s every day. So the idea of turning on my oven to bake a pizza is less than a thrilling one. To the grill I go, which we all know by now is not only “man’s” work. I love to grill and with this heat I’ve been doing a lot of it.

My son had a sleep over last night and they wanted pizza for dinner. I pulled out my bucket of dough, rolled it out and they loaded them up with toppings. Instead of baking the pizza directly on the grates, I preheated the grillwith my pizza stone to 500° and slid the pizza directly onto the stone. I love the bottom crust on these pizzas, it is always nice and crisp. The topping takes a few more minutes to bubble, but it will eventually.

For dessert I took a suggestion from Anna who wrote to us of a Greek dessert called Loukoumades, a non-enriched dough that is fried like a beignet and then soaked in a syrup to sweeten and flavor the dough. Okay, so my version is a bit different, but I used most of the same elements and the outcome was outstanding. I rolled out a piece of the master dough into a pizza, brushed a lavender simple syrup over the entire surface, then I topped it with lots of ripe fruit and baked it on the hot stone in the grill.

I lowered the temperature to 400° so that the dough wouldn’t bake quite as quickly, I wanted the fruit to have time to soften and create a syrup with its juices.

The crust puffed up and became golden brown around the edges. As soon as the juices started to bubble I took the fruit pizza off.

I sprinkled some crushed pistacios over the top and drizzled a little bit more of the lavender simple syrup. A sprinkle of powdered sugar and it was delicious. An entire meal on the grill and my kitchen is still cool!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others using one of the social sharing buttons above.
Thanks, Jeff and Zoë

21 thoughts on “Fruit Pizza on the Grill (baked with the stone)”

I had never made grilled pizza until I purchased your book a few months ago and I decided to attempt it – I don’t think that we have ordered pizza out since! I have used the master recipe, but what I like to use is the olive oil recipe and substituting in with some semolina flour part of the white flour. When it is time for pizza, I take it out, roll it in about 8 inch circle for personal pizzas, put on a pizza peel or an upside down turned cookie sheet that has been well sprinkled with cornmeal. When the grill is hot you quickly slide it directly onto the grill and don’t attempt to move it at all for a few minutes til starts to firm up then you can move it if browning too fast in one spot, but don’t turn over. When cooked well on bottom and is firmed up I remove with tongs, flip over on pizza peel put on toppings onto the side that has been grilled, put back on grill to heat toppings and grill bottom. That is what we had for the 4th of July – I premade earlier in the day 40 of these crusts (a double recipe) and we set out all toppings everyone made their own then brought out to the grill to finish.

I absolutely love your bread. I’m so addicted to it. I have grilled pizza before right on the grates, but grilling it on the stone intrigues me. I’m afraid to ruin my stone, which is an inexpensive round one from Williams and Sonoma outlet, but makes the best bread!! Do you need a special stone for the grill?

In fear that I would break my precious stone experimenting on the grill I decided to use my $9.95 stone for the purpose. It is thin and more likely to crack from the direct heat, and yet it doesn’t? It is just fine and has been all summer while I’ve grilled away on it. I’ve grilled on the lowest setting and the highest and yet it still is fine. I’m not sure why the intense heat is not having any effect, but it isn’t.

I now leave this stone on the grill and save my other one for the oven.

I was wondering… how do you think it would turn out if I bagged up the flour, yeast, and salt in gallon or larger sized bags and shelved them for use, to make it even MORE convenient in a pinch. So then it’s just dump and add water and stir.

Would I have to refrigerate the bags because of the yeast?

I thought it would make a wonderful house warming gift, if put into a pretty container or bag and left instructions on just adding the water and stirring, and the book as the card.

Saundra: It should work, but the shelf life for unrefrigerated yeast isn’t quite as long as refrigerated yeast. I’d think you’d be fine for a couple of months though (can’t promise because I haven’t tried it). It seems really impractical to require the recipients to refrigerate the bags.

I love the idea of using the stone on the grill – I take it that it’s okay to use a gas grill. and do you leave it covered or uncovered and how many burners do you light? (and how long did it take?)
sorry to pepper you with so many questions!
thanks, sarah

Sarah: Absolutely, you can use the stone on the gas grill, and to get the heat as even as possible, light all the burners. I usually pre-heat about as long as I do inside, 20 to 30 minutes. It sometimes takes a while to arrive at a proper temperature because the gas grill does not have a self-regulating thermostat. You have to fiddle with it until you get the temperature that you want. Jeff

Lots of readers have said it works nicely, though I haven’t tried it. Problem is that you can’t easily control the heat the way you can on a gas grill (where you just turn it down if it’s starting to scorch the pizza). Experiment with coals located off to one side so you can move to a cool spot if things are moving too fast.

And it’s probably best to bake the crust “blind” before adding toppings. In other words, bake on both sides before adding anything to the dough round.

The stone ought to work, again, the problem is heat delivery. It might moderate a too-hot fire and prevent scorching that might otherwise happen. Jeff

I made this last night (in the oven instead of on the grill) and it was absolutely amazing! I expected it to be good, but this was far beyond good. I used a local wildflower honey instead of the lavender syrup (I was afraid it might scorch, but it didn’t), with pears, nectarines, and raspberries. Mmmmmm. Thanks for the great idea!

Tried to make this last night. I made such a mess of it. But, it was so yummmmmy! Used fruits I had – mango, banana, strawberry (do not use orange).I thought if this tasted so good the messed up way, I ate the whole thing in two seatings, how much better will it be if I did it the Zoe way??

I have some challah dough in the freezer. I was thinking about making one of those fruit pizzas with the cream cheese topped with fruit. Do you think it would work to cook the challah as a flatbread and then add the toppings when it has cooled? Any suggestions? The recipes I’m seeing for this kind of thing mostly use sugar cookie dough for the crust, but I thought the challah might be good. I haven’t really done any flatbreads except for pizza (with the toppings added before baking). Thanks!